Dia announced today the expansion of its Board of Trustees with the appointment of six new members: Carol T. Finley, Jahanaz Jaffer, Jeffrey Perelman, Will Ryman, Lorna Simpson, and Hope Warschaw. These new members join Chair Nathalie de Gunzburg and the 14 other active trustees on Dia’s Board, which includes artists, art collectors and patrons, philanthropists, community advocates, and business leaders. Under the directorship of Jessica Morgan, Dia has added a total of 12 new members and grown its Board by nine seats, creating an expanded base of support for the nonprofit, which operates a constellation of programmatic facilities and artists’ sites nationally and internationally.

“Dia’s Board is distinguished by its leadership in the fields of visual art and philanthropy, and by a dedication to realizing ambitious artistic visions through time,” said Board Chair Nathalie de Gunzburg. “The new trustees bring insight, experience, and expertise that will serve as an invaluable resource for the ongoing advancement of Dia’s mission, collection, and program.”

“We are in an exciting new phase at Dia where we are reinvigorating our founding principles and enhancing our collection and program strategically to reflect more diverse and international perspectives,” said Jessica Morgan, Dia’s Nathalie de Gunzburg Director. “We are thrilled to be adding a diversity of leading voices in the fields of art, philanthropy, and business to our Board. Just as our relationships with our artists are deep and longstanding, so too are our ties with the individuals who make up Dia’s Board and who help shape its vision for the future.”

Current Dia exhibitions include a new commission by Rita McBride on view at Dia:Chelsea, and a selection of works by the prolific painter, sculptor, and installation artist François Morellet on view in Chelsea and at Dia:Beacon. On May 6, 2018, Dia will debut two long-term displays in Dia:Beacon—a focused exhibition of works by Mary Corse and a series of large-scale installations from the late 1960s and 1970s by Dorothea Rockburne.

About the New Trustees

Carol T. Finley is an avid supporter of the arts and education, and serves as a member on the Board of Overseers at the Institute of Contemporary Art at University of Pennsylvania; the Advisory Council at Columbia University Department of Art History and Archeology; the Columbia Arts Access (CAA) Committee; and the Board of Trustees Development Committee at Barnard College. Carol served on the Board of Directors of Lighthouse Guild. She graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College and received a JD/MBA from the joint degree program at Columbia Law School and Columbia Business School. She previously served as general counsel at Rockefeller Center (Tishman Speyer).

Jahanaz Jaffer is a collector of contemporary art and a philanthropist. Together with her husband Rehan, Jaffer supports a range of health, mental wellness, and educational causes in the United States and abroad. Jaffer was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, and currently lives in New York City with her husband and three daughters. She has a degree in economics and architectural studies from Brown University.

Jeffrey Perelman is the Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of the JEP Management holding company, which invests in dental and landscape maintenance equipment, and serves as Chief Executive Officer of DentalEZ Group, Columbia Dentoform, Schiller-Pfeiffer, Newton Tool & Manufacturing Company, General Machine Corporation, United Ammunition Container, and Mantis Europe. Perelman is a member of Christie’s American Advisory Board. He also currently serves as the Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and is a member of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Foundation. Together with his wife Marsha, Perelman has supported a range of cultural and educational organizations in the Philadelphia area, including the Franklin Institute, the Mural Arts Advocates, the Barnes Foundation, and the Philadelphia Zoo.

Will Ryman is a New York-based artist and sculptor whose large-scale installations frequently draw upon found objects and readymade materials. Ryman’s most recent work represents issues related to industrialization, globalization, and other historical complexities. Ryman has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. Recent exhibitions include Will Ryman, Parc de La Villette, Paris (2018); Will Ryman: Cadillac, CCS Center Galleries, College for Creative Studies, Detroit (2017); Bird, outdoor installation, Flatiron Plaza, New York (2013); and The Rose, outdoor installation, The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC (2011).

Hope Warschaw is the Co-Managing Director of Warland Investments, which has real estate holdings in Orange County, California and Houston, Texas. Warschaw worked in Washington, DC, for 25 years in a range of roles: serving on Ted Kennedy’s presidential campaign, as part of the Democratic National Committee, and as a consultant to the California Congressional delegation. She is the former Chair of the Board of Trustees of Otis College of Art and Design; the Vice Chair of the American Friends of the Israel Museum; former National Commissioner of the Anti-Defamation League; former President and current member of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission; Board member of Share Our Strength, the No Kid Hungry campaign; and a member of the Global Trustees of New York University. She runs the Carmen and Louis Warschaw Distinguished Lecture Series at the University of Southern California, established the Warschaw Chair in Political Science at the University of Southern California, and endowed the Warschaw Conference on Elections at the University of Southern California and the Warschaw Law Chair in Health Care Leadership at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Dia Art Foundation

Founded in 1974, Dia Art Foundation is committed to advancing, realizing, and preserving the vision of artists. At Dia:Beacon and Dia:Chelsea in Beacon and New York City, Dia fulfills its mission by commissioning new projects, organizing temporary exhibitions, displaying its collection of art from the 1960s and 1970s, and presenting programs of public engagement. Dia also maintains several long-term sites including: Walter De Maria’s The New York Earth Room (1977) and The Broken Kilometer (1979), Max Neuhaus’s Times Square (1977), and Joseph Beuys’s 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks, which was inaugurated at Documenta 7 in 1982), all of which are located in New York City; the Dan Flavin Art Institute (established in 1983) in Bridgehampton, New York; De Maria’s The Lightning Field (1977) in western New Mexico; Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) in Great Salt Lake, Utah; Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels (1973–76) in Great Basin Desert, Utah; and De Maria’s The Vertical Earth Kilometer (1977) in Kassel, Germany.